About

since 2017

Professor at LMU

Since February 2017 I am a professor for theoretical astrophysics at the LMU Munich, leading an ERC funded research group on planet formation.

2015-2016

Postdoc at MPIA

Moving back to Germany, I worked as a postdoc with Hubert Klahr and Thomas Henning at the MPIA in Heidelberg for 1.5 years.

2013-2015

Postdoc at CfA

I spent almost 3 years at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, MA working with Sean Andrews and up to today keep an affiliation with the CfA as Research Associate for ongoing projects and collaborations.

2011-2012

Postdoc at LMU

I was postdoctoral researcher at the LMU Munich and the Excellence Cluster 'Universe' working with Barbara Ercolano.

2007-2010

PhD in Astronomy

I got my PhD in Astronomy from the University of Heidelberg, working at the Max-Planck-Institute of Astronomy under the supervision of Kees Dullemond. Afterwards I stayed at the MPIA as a postdoc until June 2011.

2003-2007

Studies at U. of Würzburg and State Univ. of New York

I did my undergraduate studies at the University of Würzburg, Germany and my Masters at the State University of New York at Albany.

Research

The general topic of my research is the formation of planets as well as the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks, the birthplaces of planets. More specifically, I am woking on the dynamics of solid particles in these disks and how they grow towards planets.

Young stars and the disks around them are built up from interstellar matter which contains only very small, at most micrometer-sized dust particles. This small dust is the material out of which planets form. However the mechanisms which lead to the growth along over 45 orders of magnitude in mass are still poorly understood. The aim of my work is to understand how grains can grow from small to large and how they are distributed and transported in the disk.

These results have a vast impact on planet formation, disk structure and evolution and the chemistry of protoplanetary disks. I also work together with observers in order to compare my models to observational data and thus test the theory behind them. The questions we set out to answer are the following:

What causes the sub-structures we observe in disks? Do the disks already host planets or is something else shaping their appearance?

How can we use observations to probe the structure and evolution of protoplanetary disks?

Can our models help us understand features of our own solar system, such as the size distribution of chondrules found in meteorites, the isotopic composition of water, or the size of the solar system?

How can we explain the existence of mm-sized pebbles in the outer regions of disks? How do they form and how do they migrate?

When and where do the building blocks of planets emerge and what is their composition? Can we understand this with models based on current laboratory experiments?

What is the size and structure of so-called dead zones, i.e., regions where the disk is predicted to be non-turbulent and what is the role of fine dust grains in this picture?

Stats

The current stats according to NASA ADS are:

Refereed papers:
Citations:

You can download my CV or see all publications on ADS by clicking the buttons below.

European Research Council

ERC Starting Grant DustPrints

The ERC project DustPrints aims to treat the early stages of planet formation with all relevant physics included. The goal is to learn when and where the building blocks of planets form and to find out which mechanisms are responsible for the substructures that are now routinely seens in observations, such as rings and spirals: is it planets or other disks processes causing them?

A DustClumpin HL Tau?

A Dust Clump in HL Tau?

In our
ApJ letter
on EVLA observations of the disk around HL Tauri, we found interesting substructure in the inner rings, one possibly being a clump of dust. The results were covered in
National Geographic,
cnet,
Gizmondo,
and others.

image credit: Carrasco-Gonzalez et al.; Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF

A FrozenFlyingSaucer

A Frozen Flying Saucer

Our
A&A letter
on unusally low dust temperatures in the "flying saucer" disk was accompanied by press releases (links can be found
here).
It was also picked up by the
Discovery Channel News,
Astronews (German),
and other news websites.

Inner dust ringaround stargets supplies abroad

Inner dust ring around star gets supplies abroad

The origin of pre-transitional disks, disks that consist of an outer and an inner dust ring, have puzzled reseracher for decades. Our paper published in Astronomy & Astrophysics proposes a solution to his puzzle and was featured on
Astronomie.nl (Dutch).

LuckyDustParticles

Lucky Dust Particles

Our paper about growing planetesimals by sweep-up was discussed in Welt der Physik. Welt der Physik is a German online journal about popular science, funded by the German Physical Society and the Ministry of Science and Education. You can read the article
here.